Dear Colleague,
Please note that SCM Circular 5 and two of its amendments have been withdrawn by Treasury.The implications are payments and orders in the normal way WITHOUT Treasury intervention. Cost-containment measures are,however,still in place.
|
This Expenditure Report is a concise statement of the curremt state of expenditure. It provides insufficient segment detail to facilitate the shift of funds. Detailed information for this purpose can be obtained from the Budget Office on a daily basis. Expenditure Control Commitments Report Commitment Detail Report |
Finding it difficult to read or to print the reports? Follow these easy steps to get the job done. |
|
The revised forms for the shift of voted and conditional grant funds are attached for your convenience. |
|
Dear Colleagues
DEPARTMENTAL BUDGET FOR 2008/09
1. Permission has been granted for the release of the departmental budget for 2008/09.
2. I sincerely apologise for the delay that can almost exclusively be attributed to the creation by National Treasury of new segments and segment codes which are developed, amended and deleted on a daily basis.
3. Two budget-related documents are appended for your convenience. The one is a copy of my Budget Workbook for 2008/09 and the other a copy of a BAS report reflecting the same figures with an indication of all segments.
4. I have also attached forms for the shift and virement of funds and a copy of the revised Log to be used from now onwards.
5. The easiest way to deal with the new budget is to assume that EVERYTHING has changed, to actually look at what has been documented and to make enquiries when in doubt. A Team will visit your area shortly to try and explain the changes to the systems.
6. The most important change to the codes is to realise that 7 segment codes will in future be used instead of the customary 5.
An Asset-segment and a Regional Identifier have been added to the code structure. These are in most cases indicated at the top of your budget column.
The description of the fund, responsibility, objective and regional indicator will mostly remain unchanged for individual transactions, however, every item has an associated indicator of asset and project and this is where confusion might set in.
7. The complete sets of segment descriptions and codes are also attached for your consumption. Please be kind to the trees and use the search/find facilities of your software. I will strongly advise everybody to have a copy of Mozilla Firefox installed and to have all text files from my office opened by that particular programme. The find function (Ctrl+F) is colour-coded and most useful.
8. The amendments to the segment and related codes can be summarised as follows:
| Chief User codes: | Not a segment but remains unchanged in most cases; |
| Funds: | The funds remain basically unchanged; |
| Responsibilities: | They have basically all CHANGED in respect of the omission of Head, Manager and colon (:) designations; |
| Objectives: | Mostly more or less the same description but WITHOUT the economic classification suffix, previously indicated as *CUR, *CAP or what the case might have been; |
| Projects: | The project identifier will now carry the indicator for the economic classification of the transaction as well of the registered name of the project in the case of the conditional grants; |
| Items: | The compensation and T&S items have changed little. Most of the others have been moved around in the schedule and carry NEW DESCRIPTIONS and/or ABBREVIATIONS; |
| Assets: | This is a NEW segment applicable to all assets, large and small (in other words, costing more OR less than R5 000) procured from the budget. These are in some cases a mirror-image of the item description; |
| Regional indicator: | This NEW segments denotes that part of the country/province/district that benefits from the transaction. These have in all cases, except for the projects, already been indicated in your budget. |
Let's quote an example from the Office of the MEC procuring for catering for an Outreach or Launch:
|
Previously (2007/08) (5 segments) |
Now/new (2008/09) (7 segments) | |
| Chief User code: (for Logs) | 101M | 101M |
| Fund: | VOTED FUNDS | VOTED FUNDS |
| Responsibility: | HEAD: OFFICE OF THE MEC | OFFICE OF THE MEC |
| Objective: | MEC SUPPORT*CUR | OFFICE OF THE MEC |
| Project: | NO PROJECTS - CURRENT | NO PROJ STND ALONE CUR |
| Item: | CATERING | CATERING:DEPARTML ACTIVITIES |
| Assets: | - | NON-ASSETS RELATED |
| Regional indicator: | - | FS: WHOLE PROVINCE |
These codes now indicate that the procurement of catering services relates to no specific asset and the benefit will accrue the entire province.
I trust that this example will provide some measure of clarity before everybody can be reached with training.
9. Requests for the shift of funds within a programme and/or the virement of funds between programmes should please be submitted to my office for ratification of availability of funds, where after they will be submitted to the Office of the CFO or Accounting Officer as the case may be. We realise that scaling down the budget for 2008/09 by R40.0 million left its scars but please try and limit the requests to the inevitable.
10. We spent the budget for 2007/08 and with your kind assistance will we spend the budget for 2008/09.